


The Eldest Jondrette Boy

by TeaJay (LoreWren)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Coping Mechanisms, Depression, Gen, M/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4257552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoreWren/pseuds/TeaJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I love you, she thinks. Although "think" seems like an utterly ridiculous word to use to describe the way the feeling pulses through her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eldest Jondrette Boy

_I love you_ , she thinks. Although "think" seems like an utterly ridiculous word to use to describe the way the feeling pulses through her.

Eponine has trouble remembering exactly when she thought it first. She remembers he smiled at her just before, but Marius smiles often, and Eponine remembers every one of his smiles. She remembers wishing that she had better clothes, but Eponine always wishes for better clothes; she did even when she had good ones.

She remembers holding the thought, the feeling--the _hope_ close, like a flame warming her chest. It was the first beautiful thing she had had in years.

Eponine almost told Marius. Eponine almost told Marius every time she felt truly hopeful. She might have come that close...oh, two or three times. She tucks the feeling in loose clothes and other valuable things, trying to keep it safe.

///

Eponine is not a fool.

Eponine prefers hope to despair. This does not make her a fool, merely self-aware and practical. At worst, false hope leads to weeping into one's pillow at the end of the day. Despair leads to never getting out of bed at all.

Eponine prefers hope to despair for much the same reason she prefers bad food to no food at all. It may make her sick, but she still needs to eat.

///

Marius if going to join them on the barricades. Marius is in love with Cosette, and he is going on the barricades, and Gavroche is going on the barricades, and there is nothing Eponine can do to stop either of them, not really.

They are all going to die. She knows this, with such certainty that she cannot even call on false hope. Even if Marius does live, Gavroche won't--he takes comfort in his cleverness the same way she takes comfort in her love, and he wouldn't risk his life on it if it weren't important, but this is. He will.

Even if Marius does live, he will go back to his Cosette.

Bad food is better than no food, but Eponine has gotten very good at figuring out when bad food stops being any food at all.

Eponine stares at what they have left of the things that are theirs. Enough men's clothes for it to work. Enough cloth to bind their breasts. Enough to be recognized as a man, for once.

They wrap their breasts, and they cry, because they are about to lose everything.

But he can still weep, Eponine can, he can still do that. He is losing everything.

But once he's given up the option of being Marius's, there is no reason to keep pretending that he feels right in girl's clothes, in women's words--'she' and 'miss' and all the other little blows that he has simply kept close, until he can fall into his bed or his walks through a half-hidden city and dream.

And as he dreams that last time, he dreams that Marius holds him in the rain and says he loves him, that he loves _him_ , and it's a moment that can bring a smile to his face for just a moment. It feels like being loved more than simply  valued, like being kissed in truth rather than just for show.

He does not see Marius for a great many years after that. But when he wakes next, Gavroche was there, and Eponine has a body that made sense.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, though that is still such a paltry word, _is this what home feels like._


End file.
